Tw-eat-ups! Twee-eat-ups. Tweet. Eat. Up. No matter how you spell it out, tw-eat-ups are paving way for friendships of the 21st century. Well, in my world anyway. Despite the glaring dangers of meeting up with near strangers for the sake of a decent meal, my primal necessity to seek out good food with gooder company triumphs time and time again, challenging me to take on risky rendezvous with fellow foodies from twitterverse.
And I never turn down a challenge.
All right, so Yum Cha is not exactly risky. But it was up Camden High Street.
Last Tuesday night saw me traipsing up Camden High Street, feeling tremendously out of place with zero bodily piercings. I’d say the par for half the people I walked past would be an eyebrow ring, two lip rings and a nose stud. And those were the goodie-two-shoes. I thought my tattoos would blend me in, but gah, even they are too cute.
So I was skadoodling up punk town street, in search of yum cha. I mean Yum Cha, like the name of a restaurant. Yum Cha, that serves yum cha. Confused? I know, like they couldn’t come up with a slightly more creative name. Calling it like it is, I guess. At least it wasn’t called Burrito. That, my friends, would have screwed with your heads big time.
I managed to find Yum Cha, and met up with EuWen and Charmaine, and much like my tw-eat-up with Kang and Mark, conversation flowed as freely as our order of blue tea (which wasn’t really blue), rendering us completely powerless to each others’ charms. Or maybe we just liked to talk about food.
The night menu was slightly disappointing in that it was limited to a selection of steamed and fried dim sum dishes (because people don’t normally have yum cha at night? Because it was 50% off?), and glaringly without the usual suspects such as cheong fun and turnip cake. We left the food order to Charmaine, who basically ticked all of the steamed dim sum, and a serve of salt & pepper squid, for good measure.
The food at Yum Cha was surprisingly yum, and the cha, that wasn’t bad too. One by one the standard dishes started coming out, starting with the wu kok (fried taro paste with pork) and salt & pepper squid, whose garlic and chilli bits left us chopstick-battling for the leftover tasties (am I really that bad at describing food? Yes, apparently I am).
Up next were the char siu bao (BBQ pork buns) and lo mai kai (sticky rice in lotus leaf), both of which were also good, but apparently not as good as the shao long bao (dumplings with soup) because these were so effin’ good, we dove straight in and totally forgot to take photos. Serious.
The next dishes that followed were the tried and tested dumplings ~ scallop, chives, and siu mai (pork & prawn dumplings), backed up by a serve of choi sum, deliciously stir fried in garlic. People, let it be known that when in doubt, bring in the garlic, it always tastes good.
We were sufficiently full by now, but fooooodies, come on, what is a tw-eat-up without dessert? Charmaine and I hit up the mango pudding (covered in a light layer of condensed milk ~ mmmm), while EuWen finished up with banana fritters. Desserts were soso in comparison to the dim sum, and all served with a scoop of Tesco’s horridly coloured ice cream.
We left full and happy, but if anyone actually reads this blog and wants to go to Yum Cha? I’d say save it for a lunch date. While the food was pretty good, the limited menu is somewhat stifling, leaving me pining after a hearty serve of har cheong.
But regardless, another successful tw-eat-up in the bag! Keep em’ coming!
Read EuWen’s review here.
Yum Cha
28 Chalk Farm Road
Chalk Farm, NW1 8AG
0207 482 2228
